Episode 20: Aftershocks

Before you hit play — quick note.This is a serialized podcast.The story starts at Episode 1 and goes all the way to 22. In order.Don’t jump around — you won’t follow the story. You’ll be confused, and then you’ll blame me.Some platforms like to show the newest episode first. So if the episodes aren’t sorted Episode 1 through 22, go into your show settings and change the sort order to oldest to newest.Start at Episode 1. Work your way forward.That’s it. Happy listening.

Series Finale. The final strike. The valve that was supposed to last ten years ran out of time. Open-heart surgery, new scars, and old fears — all over again.I survived once more… but survival isn’t the same as living.

The meds were working, the shocks stopped, and life finally felt steady— until fatigue set in, my golden retriever got sick, and my heart broke for an entirely different reason.

After experimenting with meds, my heart was finally tamed — but the process was exhausting. Between Costco phone calls, side effects, and a doctor vacationing in Hawaii, life somehow stayed absurd. Even calm came with conditions.

I thought I’d made it through the worst—until life gave me another jolt right before a big work presentation. Turns out, just when you think your heart’s under control, it decides otherwise.

The world shut down—but for me, the fear hit different. I’d already survived death once. Now, every cough felt personal. From toilet paper panic to Zoom therapy, backyard wine nights to a Facebook fundraiser in Chennai, this episode captures the strange, heavy, sometimes absurd reality of living through 2020 as a high-risk cardiac patient. Survival wasn’t heroic. It was just… muscle memory.

Fresh out of cardiac arrest and still reeking of antiseptic, I told my boss I only needed two weeks off. Why? Because fear, money, and ego make a hell of a combo. In this episode, I talk about rushing back to work, learning to breathe again (literally), descending eight flights of stairs in a Seattle fire drill with an ICD in my chest, and picking up the saxophone like it was going to save my life. Then—just as things were stabilizing—2020 showed up. The pandemic didn’t just pause the world. It collided with my fragile recovery.If you’ve ever survived something—and had to pretend you were fine—this one’s for you.

Fresh out of surgery, I walk into my electrophysiologist’s office — the same guy who just wired my heart to a machine. What follows is part science lesson, part tech demo, and part existential crisis. From “plumbing vs. wiring” to watching my heart get remotely controlled by a wand, this episode dives into the absurd, miraculous world of cardiac engineering — and what it means to live with a literal power source in your chest.

Back home after cardiac arrest—with CPR bruises, pneumonia, and a $50K shock device in my chest. My dog barely noticed. My family tried to keep things normal. I felt anything but. This episode covers the first painful, disorienting, and darkly funny week of recovery—when survival didn’t feel like victory.

Fresh out of cardiac arrest, I wake up to meet a new kind of heart specialist—the electrician. What follows is part absurd, part profound: a blur of drugs, Easter timing, and my family scrambling to choose which implantable defibrillator will literally keep me alive. Between morphine buttons, misplaced humor, and quiet faith, I find myself upgraded—part man, part machine. A story about survival, surrender, and the strange comfort of wearing  my own spark plug.